“But I couldn’t just walk in on Jay and Gertie. If I alarmed them—well, you remember the threat they left behind. We’d promised Walter not to take any risks. Poor devil, he’s half off his rocker from thinking about the baby.”
“But—how long have you been here?”
“Made the arrangements Thursday night. I’d scarcely hoped to get on this floor, but—under pressure—Mrs. Ulrichson admitted that the lady in 4-D was to be away for the weekend. She thought maybe she could fix it up with you if you came back early; then on Friday she called me to say it would be all right, you were staying till Monday. What made you come back?”
“A leaky roof. Go on—what about her?” He was making me urge him for information. I wondered how much he would have liked to suppress.
He moistened his lips, looking at me over his shoulder. “She met with—an accident,” he said.
“What happened?” I said.
“You didn’t hear anything about it? Look at this.”
Barney flipped through the newspapers that were piled between us on the chesterfield. “Here,” he said, pulling out a copy of the Eagle, dated February 12, and opening it to an inside page.
I followed his pointing finger. Under the heading, “Freak Fall Injures Woman,” I saw the name of Mrs. Minnie Ulrichson, and the address of El Central.
“—in emergency hospital with a possible fractured skull,” the item read. “No one witnessed the fall, though a bent stair-rod and a heel torn from a shoe seem to indicate that the woman had tripped while going downstairs. Miss Rose Delage, a tenant, returning to her third-floor apartment at noon, found Mrs. Ulrichson unconscious. A hall table beside her had been displaced. The woman’s head injury was presumably caused by a heavy potted plant jarred from the table by the force of her fall.
“According to Dr. J. J. Warfield of the hospital staff, Mrs. Ulrichson’s condition is critical.
“This is the third household accident to occur—”
The rest was irrelevant. I glanced up with knitted brows, and met Barney’s eyes. He said, “I’ll bet anything that even if she recovers she won’t know what—or who—struck her.”
“Were you here when that happened?”
“No. It was after I talked to her and before I moved in.”
“Do you think it was—deliberate?”
He shrugged. “I know what I think, but there’s nothing to prove her fall wasn’t accidental.”
“Don’t the police investigate those accidents?”
“They did in this case, but not thoroughly. Maybe when they came round to ask, the Johnsons didn’t answer the bell. Anyway, the woman next door told them whom to notify, and they got hold of the nephew. He came right over. He was in possession—and all of a flutter—when I got back here with my bags; so of course I had to pitch my detective yarn all over again, and scare him a bit into the bargain. That’s when we took your sheet out of the ledger, just as a precaution.”
“You must have scared him thoroughly,” I said. “He backed you up like a good one.”
“Yes. He did, didn’t he?” said Barney thoughtfully. “Well,” he went on after a moment, “it was too bad that poor old Ma had to be bopped, but it helped me, in a way. I made myself believe that two mights added up to a must. Jay and his friends might be the criminals, she might have seen the baby that morning, and had to be silenced. This must be the right track—and still there was no proof.
“And then you arrived, and casually let drop the one thing I needed. —That bit of knowledge puts you in danger, as sure as if you’d picked up a time bomb.”
The jump my heart gave, the sudden crisping of my nerves, told me something beyond doubt. In emotion, if not in judgment, I believed this story.
“Those people didn’t see me, did they?”
“Don’t be too sure,” said Barney grimly. “I don’t believe they knew what we said to each other, nor why we went downstairs. You might have returned for something you’d forgotten when you moved—people move often and suddenly from these apartments. But don’t forget that while we were on the first floor they left that room. We didn’t meet them in the halls, so I’ll bet they were hidden somewhere, and saw us come up again.”
He leaned forward. “They had reason to feel a bit nervous about me already. How would they have figured it if you—the one remaining witness—talked to me for a few minutes and then went away? Maybe you’d given them away, maybe you hadn’t, maybe I wasn’t after them at all—but in any case it would pay them to see that you talked to nobody else. And don’t think they wouldn’t have managed it. There are plenty of dark alleys around here.”
I had a vivid picture of that in my mind, and as I studied it my insides curled up like the leaf of a sensitive plant. Neighbors who were so anxious for privacy that without a second thought they’d leave you in an alley with a fractured skull—
So anxious for their privacy that when I returned they left their apartment for another point of greater advantage—
“Look here,” I said, frowning, “isn’t it possible that—that I’ve ruined all your plans already, just by turning up? Maybe I deserve to be hit over the head!”
Barney looked around at me, slowly; and slowly he began to grin. “Well, blow me down,” he said. “I do believe you’re on our side.”
It was almost with a feeling of relief that I thought, Judgment be hanged! Emotion had the upper hand from the minute when I’d begun to accept Barney at face value, though I couldn’t have told you when that happened.
Emotion had been the stronger power, all along. Without my own volition I had taken a momentous step forward. At the beginning, I hadn’t meant to settle down amicably with this stranger; now, disturbingly, the choice had been taken out of my hands. I believed in him, and I—oh, put it into words; I liked him.
No use now to quote the line about eating with the devil. At sight of the dish of excitement he offered, I’d discarded my long spoon.
“Who wouldn’t be?” I said on a deep breath.
He continued to gaze at me, and the grin faded to an enigmatic half smile. What was behind it? Triumph, admiration, or something I didn’t dare name?
Though neither of us moved, I felt as if I’d held out a hand and he had taken it in a strong clasp.
There was a curious glow behind the ice blue of his eyes. I tried to look away, and found unexpectedly that until he released me I could not.
“I don’t know what I can do to help,” I added rather shakily.
“Do nothing,” he said with emphasis, “and don’t get into danger.”
Now that his look was averted, I came to myself. (Do rabbits really get hypnotized?) “But what are you supposed to be doing here?”
He turned abruptly, and I all but shrank back at sight of the white fire in his face. “Haven’t you got that yet? What do you think I’m doing? I’m waiting for a crisis. The ransom is to be paid tonight. Tonight!”
“And you’ll get—” my throat went suddenly dry—“they’ll return the—”
“The baby?” said Barney remotely. “If anything goes wrong the baby will be dead by morning.”
...He could sit here, I learned, because for a time there was nothing else to do. To keep as free as possible from direct suspicion, he had to sit tight, and let the newspaper men, who had every exit from the building under an unobtrusive guard, take over the surveillance of the criminals. Though the three had escaped from his immediate observation, they must still be in the building; if they should leave, a signal would come from below.
If no one signaled to him, his part of the job was finished; but in any event, he must keep out of sight and look innocent.
“I feel so damned ineffectual,” he said with a rueful chuckle, “that I’ve had to remind myself of all the long sieges in history. But you see, I feel certain, from things I’ve seen and heard, that the kidnapping plot has headquarters in this building; I managed to learn that much from what your neighbors said to each other. There were references to certa
in times that were too exact for coincidence.”
“You can’t hear people talking through these walls.”
“No,” Barney said, “but the ceilings are thinner.” He saw my incredulous look, and grinned. “Did you ever open that scuttle hole in the hall ceiling?”
“Where you hid my things? No, why should I?”
“You come here,” he said, “and I’ll show you something.”
The ladder he brought from the kitchen was an unusually tall one. He had found it, said Barney calmly, in the staircase enclosure which led from the outside corridor to the roof, and had brought it into my kitchen late on Friday night. Even kidnappers, he figured, had to sleep sometimes—though he’d been in mortal terror that the creaking board outside their door would arouse them. You couldn’t pass that door without making a bit of noise, but that worked both ways since it had served to advise him of all their comings and goings.
“By George,” he added, pausing in the act of setting up the ladder, “the stairway to the roof—that’s where they must have hidden while you and I went past.”
“But where did they go then, onto the roof? It was raining pitchforks while we were arguing downstairs.”
He shook his head. “The roof wouldn’t do them any good. They’d have had to get down somehow, and the boys would have spotted them. No, I think they went down the regular stairs as soon as we were shut in here. No telling for sure where they are now, but I have a fairly good idea.
“Well, look, Cameron—I beg your pardon, Miss Ferris.”
He had raised the square of boards which covered the hole in the hall ceiling. Obediently I clambered up the ladder and took the flashlight he handed me, swinging its powerful beam about the enclosed space under the flat roof.
Except for a narrow platform around the scuttle hole, the rafters were uncovered. They stretched away as far as sight could penetrate into the dusty dimness: a ribbing of rough two-by-fours, separated by rectangular canyons of lath and plaster, crossed here and there by a network of electric wiring. This space extended across the entire top of the building.
“All I had to do was crawl across those,” said Barney, standing below me on the ladder. Instinctively he spoke in a whisper. “I had to be quiet, of course; but the wires led me right where I wanted to go, over the ceiling of 4-B. I heard some interesting talk.”
I flashed the light behind me and saw my suitcases and furnishings, neatly stacked on the platform. It gave me an odd and unpleasant feeling, as if there stood all that was mortal of Cameron Ferris.
Even the page from the landlady’s ledger, I found later, was hidden in this raftered space. All that remained to prove my existence—
I gave back the flashlight and descended the ladder, rather quickly. Barney had to go up and replace the square of boards, which lifted easily and could be fitted into the hole from below.
He put the ladder in the kitchen, too, murmuring, “Might as well clean up as we go.” It was a great unwieldy thing, but he handled it like a yardstick.
“There,” he added, facing me and dusting off his hands, “you see the extra advantage of this apartment. Jay and Fingers and the woman chatted freely, since they didn’t know anyone could get to a point above them.”
“You actually heard them discussing—”
“Well, they didn’t say, ‘What about the baby we kidnapped from the Cleveland home at ten last Tuesday morning?’ But they talked about El Cerrito traffic cops, and speed on the Bay Bridge, and timing. There was one thing I heard—I’m not certain to whom they were referring: the woman said, ‘He’ll meet you there if he can, but if he’s not there by four you’ll come back here. It won’t take more than half an hour, that time of night.’”
And that, said Barney, could be nothing but a discussion of the ransom plans.
I went back to the living room and sat down, watching the big man as he prowled restlessly back and forth. It was astonishing how freely he talked—almost as if he thought it important that I should be in possession of all these details. I wondered, rather uneasily, if he expected to be in danger himself and wanted me well primed with this story—in case he didn’t come back.
No, that couldn’t be it. He was talking, I realized suddenly, because of a growing tension. Forced against his inclination to stay quiet and out of sight, he found inaction almost unbearable. It eased him to tell the story to a raptly listening outsider. Anyone else would have done as well.
He’d stop sometimes, and gaze unseeingly at me. It was in those minutes of silence that I recaptured a vivid sense of our surroundings: the two of us, strangers, shut up together in a box suspended high above the gradually slackening motion of the city. Outside, the storm had fallen into a period of comparative quiet. The waterfall roar of rain had diminished, but a wind was coming in fitful gusts, now and then flinging a handful of drops against the window.
But when Barney was speaking I forgot the strangeness and the dreariness. We were in direct communication, and I was caught up by his surcharged vitality.
“—I like talking to you,” he interjected into his story at one point. There was a hint of surprise in his tone. I knew, though, why he felt that way; after years of practice, I really am a good listener.
And the pattern was growing. Before long it would be complete.
Midnight; quarter past midnight. There would be some time to wait, as yet, before Barney could expect his signal from below, before Mr. Walter Cleveland would set out from his Pacific Avenue home on a torturing errand.
SIX
Follow My Leader
THERE HAD BEEN more notes from the kidnappers: three in all, counting the original. The first had outlined how the parents were to announce themselves as willing to negotiate. The second, more elaborate, was presented in a different medium, that of words and letters clipped from newspaper columns, but signed by a single initial—C—in the same rubber-stamp letter and purple ink. This one specified the ransom demand, fifty thousand dollars in untraceable small bills.
It asked for something else, too, Barney said cryptically; something that pointed directly to the unknown enemy, and by a hideous irony, the one thing that could not be produced. He stumbled a little on this part, and chose his words carefully. There was, it seemed, an ethical problem involved—or would have been if Mr. Cleveland had been forced to make a choice between saving the baby’s life and—something else.
I had my mouth open to ask a question, but he forestalled me with a silencing gesture. The third note, he said, had come on Saturday. It instructed Mr. Cleveland to drive, alone and with nobody following him, to a point in the East Bay. He was to arrive at this specified landmark—on San Pablo Avenue, the arterial to the north—at 3:30 on Monday morning; to turn off the highway onto a stretch of boulevard which ran for five miles through country property, outside the jurisdiction of city police; and to drive slowly up and down those five miles until someone by the road should signal him to stop. This would occur at some time within an hour after his arrival.
It was, I could see, a plan which again plucked the maximum of safety from the obvious danger in which the kidnappers’ act had placed them. At three o’clock on a February morning, they would be free from casual observation, and even if the help of the police had secretly been enlisted, it would be difficult to patrol that five miles of road and meadow land without giving the kidnappers warning.
Mr. Cleveland meant to obey these orders to the letter—except that he would have to produce a substitute for the object which was “C’s” additional demand.
But, said Barney, there were the times which he had heard mentioned by the three in the next apartment; they coincided so exactly as to leave little room for error. If Jay Ruber and his moll, and Fingers Lossert, went through with the rendezvous according to plan, and if they should escape afterward, they could always be picked up.
“With Mr. O’Shea’s help?” I put in.
“Possibly.”
“Just how far do you trust him?” I said. “
You made some remark about a double-cross.”
Barney appeared to muse. “Under ordinary conditions,” he replied finally, “I’d trust him no more than a yard away, and then I’d want both his hands to be in sight. Here, I—well, I have to take him on faith. But,” he added sternly, “don’t you get in his way. He’s nervous about more things than art.”
“I won’t,” said I with fervor. “You said he was in this purely for revenge. What did Jay Ruber do to him?”
“Jay,” said Barney with a rueful shake of his head, “did not behave in a nice way at all. Never mind that, though.—You see my problem. I can’t interfere with those three before they start for the ransom meeting; for the sake of Melissa’s safety, they have to be given as much rope as possible. I think we’re still on the safe side; maybe they’re doubtful, but I backed up my story as best I could when I made myself a new character as a bona fide tenant.”
“I see. This whole masquerade was only to lend artistic verisimilitude—”
He took it up at once. “To an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative; yes. I had to prepare for anything. What I was really dreading was a—uh, well, boyfriend of C. Ferris. It had to look as if you’d moved.”
“Little did you know,” I said, “what a small risk you ran from that quarter.”
“I know now, but I didn’t until I saw you.” He sat down beside me. “How about friends from your office—where was it you said you worked?”
“Caya’s. Wholesale hardware. I’ve been there only six weeks, but that’s long enough; I don’t ask my office acquaintances to come calling.” (That was literally true, I hadn’t asked Roger. But was it fair not to mention him—trying to put him out of my mind?)
“What do you do there?”
“I’m a filing clerk. I put away invoices about wire and bolts and shovels, so that nobody but me can find ’em again. Thus industry is carried on.”
He chuckled. “What did you do before that?”
The 9 Dark Hours Page 7